


candlewax and polaroids on the hardwood floor

by bigfootsflannel



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, M/M, Post Break Up, References to alcohol use, Sylvain Jose Gautier is a Mess, feelings are hard and understanding them is harder, love that that tag exists, the boys are reunited at a wedding, the promise of a happily ever after, why are tags and descriptions so HARD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-28
Updated: 2020-10-28
Packaged: 2021-03-08 17:48:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,164
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27240724
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bigfootsflannel/pseuds/bigfootsflannel
Summary: Felix hates weddings and he absolutely doesn't want to see Sylvain for the first time since they broke up a few years ago. He attends Dimitri's wedding anyway.
Relationships: Felix Hugo Fraldarius/Sylvain Jose Gautier, blink and you'll miss it Dimileth
Comments: 15
Kudos: 101





	candlewax and polaroids on the hardwood floor

Felix had grown up listening to fairy tales. And whether or not he wanted to admit it, maybe a part of him had believed in them. He'd curl up with his mother and she'd read to him from a story book, or he'd hang onto Glenn's every word when he'd spin tales for him out of everyday, mundane events.

(And how funny it was, that both of those people's stories were over now, and Felix was left behind with nothing but memories that slipped away from him like sand through his fingertips, one grain at a time.)

A part of him had liked the idea of a happily ever after, maybe. Maybe he liked the thought of a knight in shining armor coming to protect him.

But he had gotten older and matured and realized that the only person he could count on to look after him _was_ himself.

There was no happily ever after. One way or another, most stories ended in tragedy.

So it almost made him laugh when he received an invitation to Dimitri's wedding. Out of all the people on the planet, somehow Dimitri Blaiddyd had talked himself into a happily ever after, or at least the illusion thereof.

Felix didn't even want to attend the wedding.

They hadn't been close since they were children, after all. They'd barely kept up. His father had been sending him messages here and there about how Dimitri had yet to receive an RSVP from him, or reminders that he'd need to get a suit for the occasion (along with offers to pay for said suit, which he'd quickly declined).

Dimitri had even given him a call asking if he might want to be one of his groomsmen, which he had considered for about half a second before he realized that Sylvain was almost definitely in the wedding party. “For your own sake,” he had told Dimitri after receiving confirmation that Sylvain was indeed already pulling on Dedue's ear to plan the bachelor party, “you don't want me in your wedding party.”

Somehow, though, the same conversation had led into him telling Dimitri that he would, indeed, be at the wedding after all. Maybe he was just a glutton for punishment. Maybe it was just the unexpected gentle plea in Dimitri's voice, playing tricks on Felix's soft underbelly.

He also got roped into doing things with Dimitri in preparation for the wedding even though he was pretty sure that was exactly what he had declined previously. But between Rodrigue acting as Dimitri's replacement father, and Ingrid also playing groomsman, it had turned into something he couldn't quite avoid.

The agreement had been that he would only show up if Sylvain wasn't there for one reason or another. He'd cut Ingrid's pitying look short with a glare when he'd stated his conditions. So it went that he found himself at events like fittings for Dimitri's tuxedo, and a couple of happy hours that he was told were ostensibly about wedding plans, but appeared to Felix to mostly me purely for the sake of socializing.

And for the most part, the whole thing wasn't so bad.

(There had been one moment, though.

Dimitri had been standing in front of the mirror, the tailor making adjustments to his suit, and he'd cast a glance back at the couch where Felix and his other friends were sitting. “You're sure you think the style looks fine on me?”

Felix didn't know a damn thing about about fashion or what cuts and styles were appropriate for different body types - he wasn't even sure why he was there, aside from the fact that Sylvain was apparently swamped with something at work. Still, Dimitri seemed to be looking at him in particular; he supposed, though, he was just as likely to know anything about all this as Ingrid.

“It looks fine,” he said with a shrug, because it did.

“Sylvain seemed to think a little bit uncomfortable in it,” he offered in explanation, though a moment later he looked stricken. “Oh. Felix, I apologize, I had nearly forgotten - ”

“Don't,” he cut Dimitri off before he could go on. He had gotten enough pity for a lifetime years ago. “There's no reason to act like he doesn't exist around me.”

There was still a tense atmosphere in the room after that, as if everyone was trying to determine whether or not it actually was okay, as if this were some kind of test Felix was giving them.

"Besides, Sylvain clearly doesn't know what he's talking about," he said, not wanting to continue to talk but feeling the need to, just to break the tension. "You always look a little uncomfortable."

He could hear a laugh escape from Ingrid's lips before he contained herself, clearing her throat to cover up the sound.

"Ah," Dimitri said, nodding his head slowly as he regarded his reflection, as if somehow he had found some kind of wisdom in what Felix had just said. "Well, there is that."

And sure, he had been mildly mean to Dimitri, but he hadn't really seemed to mind and the tension had gone away, so all in all it felt like a win.)

The only thing was, of course, there was no way to completely avoid Sylvain. And it wasn't like he necessarily felt like he needed to, but Felix had never been the best at handling complicated interpersonal situations.

The issue finally came around when the wedding weekend came around. It wasn’t quite a destination wedding, but Dimitri’s family had a lot of long-standing traditions, and so of course there was a particular venue where he was expected to be wed. It was a couple of hours away, which had made Felix consider just driving up and back the same day of the wedding, or getting a hotel room for just the night of the wedding, but - as seemed to be happening to him far too often for his kicking - he got suckered into staying the whole weekend by Ingrid, citing that everyone else would be there and it would be more fun with him.

(She hadn’t accepted his argument that he wasn’t exactly anyone’s definition of fun, and instead she’d sent him the information for the hotel that they were all planning to stay at.)

The wedding was going to be held on Saturday, and he would be arriving on Thursday. He knew, logically, that that meant that seeing Sylvain was almost inevitable unless he opted to spend the entire weekend hiding away in his hotel room, defeating the purpose of being there at all. In spite of that, he still expected it would probably be at least Friday or maybe even at the wedding itself before they came face to face.

But when he tried to go to bed on Thursday night after the drive up, he had found that the air conditioning unit in his room wasn’t working, and after a failed attempt to get it working again, the girl at the front desk had offered to get him moved into another room. When he went down to collect the keys to his new room, he found that she was occupied with a familiar face. Red hair and casual clothes damp from the rain that had been threatening to come down all evening, he didn’t seem bothered in the slightest as he leaned against the counter, talking up the girl as she checked him in.

Felix was about to back away and just come back once the coast was clear when apparently Sylvain noticed movement out of the corner of his eye and turned to look. The look on his face seemed to brighten when he realized who exactly he had found. “Well, look who it is! Felix!” he said, as if the last time they’d seen each other hadn’t been when he’d gone to pick up a box of his things that he’d left over at Felix’s apartment.

“Sylvain,” he said, nodding at him in acknowledgment. He didn’t need this to be any more awkward or prolonged than it had to be. If not for his own sake, then for the front desk agent, who absolutely did not need to be a part of their bullshit.

“Aw, c’mon,” Sylvain pouted, “Nothing? No hug? That’s no way to greet your best friend.”

And he certainly could have had some choice words for him at that point if it wasn’t for the fact that he just wanted to go to fucking bed. He didn’t need to question where exactly ‘dating for a year and then breaking up out of the blue and disappearing’ fell on the sliding scale of appropriate behavior for best friends, because there was no point in it.

“You smell like wet dog, I’m not hugging you,” he said. True, more or less; _drowned rat_ may have been a more appropriate descriptor. But Sylvain had always had the outward appearance of an enthusiastic, loyal golden retriever.

There was some kind of poetry in the fact that the man who had once been his knight in shining armor had gotten caught in the rain, leaving his armor to rust. Not that that mattered now. None of it did, because some stories were just meant to end in tragedy, and even thinking along those lines was far from productive.

“I think I smell perfectly fine,” he said, dramatically lifting an arm to take a quick sniff under his armpit.

“Shut up,” he said, then looked back at the woman behind the counter. “Just go ahead and finish getting this idiot checked in, otherwise we’ll be here all night.”

Sylvain frowned a little bit as he looked back at her as well, and it was almost funny. For their entire lives, the redhead had always been so easily distracted by any pretty woman that came within a certain radius of him; but when it had come to Felix he’d sometimes develop a sort of tunnel vision. He didn’t know whether it made him feel better or worse to know that that much hadn’t changed.

Conveniently, though, he didn’t say anything else to Felix, just turning his charm back on to apologize to the girl for taking up more of her time than necessary. And before long, he was on his way, and she was able to move on to the comparatively quick and easy process of getting keys made for Felix to get into a new room.

It shouldn’t have come as any surprise when he rounded the corner to go back to the elevators only to find that Sylvain was still standing there. He was looking at a sign on the wall as if he were reading it, but it was a bit too obvious an attempt to look casual to Felix’s eyes. Brushing past him, Felix pushed the button to call the elevator. “You could’ve gone up.”

“Yeah, well, I thought… Might as well ride up together, right?” he said, flashing him a quick grin as the elevator doors slid open and they both stepped on. Leaning into Felix’s personal space to look at the key jacket, he asked, “What floor are you on?”

Giving him a glare that was absolutely ineffective at getting him to back off, he said, “Fifth.”

“Oh, great, me too,” Sylvain said. There was an annoying amount of sincerity in his tone. He held up his own keys to check his room number, humming a moment later. “I think we might be next door to each other. Convenient, right? It’ll be nice to get nice and cozy with you again.”

And that was about all that Felix could take. “What’s going on here?”

“What do you mean? I’m just - ”

“Because if you think you’re going to, I don’t fucking know, treat me like one of your hookups and charm me into your bed, it’s not going to happen,” he said.

“That’s not what this is,” he said, shaking his head.

Felix raised an eyebrow at him. “Then what is it?”

“I just… I thought that it would be best if we could go back to old times for the weekend.”

“What old times? The part where I let you string me along for a year thinking that maybe you really had changed, or before that?”

Letting out a long breath, Sylvain rubbed his hand over his face. “Felix… I…” he trailed off, shaking his head after a moment. “Okay, I guess that’s not what I meant. I just think that it’ll be best for everyone if we try and be normal this weekend.”

“Normal,” he repeated. “By which you mean flirting with me?”

“I mean…”

“I think that would only draw attention to this. It’s not like everyone doesn’t know what happened,” Felix said, which actually felt a little bit unfair, because sometimes even _he_ felt like he didn’t know what happened between them. “So us talking much would only lead to gossip.”

“I guess that’s true,” he admitted with a small shrug. “And I know how you hate gossip, but… I dunno, I just felt like it would help lighten the mood. It’ll be the elephant in the room either way, but if we’re playing nice… Then Dimitri’s wedding won’t feel like it’s about us.”

Felix scoffed. “The best thing we can do for Dimitri and Byleth - and Ingrid, and _everyone_ \- is to just ignore each other,” he said. “No forced casualness. No pretending that things are fine when everyone knows that they’re not.”

Sylvain frowned, and the look on his face betrayed a level of hurt that Felix couldn’t analyze or even begin to deal with right now. He opened his mouth like there was more that he wanted to say, but then there was a light _ding_ as the elevator doors opened again.

“We can be adults, Sylvain,” Felix went on as he stepped off of the elevator, letting out a soft breath. “No hard feelings, right?”

They walked down the hallway towards their respective rooms in relative silence; Felix could tell that Sylvain was trying to find something to say, but he was also pretty sure that he had covered it all pretty nicely - there was no use in pretending.

After all, if they didn’t pretend, then he wouldn’t accidentally let his guard down again. Sylvain had always had a way of slipping past his defenses, and he wasn’t about to let that happen again.

When Felix got to the door of his new room, he chanced a glance back in Sylvain’s direction, only to find that the man was looking right back at him. It was a little bit disarming, but he quickly shook off the feeling in favor of getting back to achieving his original goal of getting to bed and hopefully getting a reasonable amount of sleep.

As he was getting ready to get into bed, his phone went off. The message was from a number that wasn’t saved in his phone, but despite his best efforts, Felix would remember those digits by heart for the rest of his days.

_I feel like that could have gone better. Let’s talk sometime - can I try again?_

He didn’t bother answering, instead turning off his phone entirely and getting under the covers.

* * *

The next day, the rehearsal dinner - or rather, rehearsal _brunch_ \- was held, and it was the kind of event that Felix very much did not see the point in. But his father had shamed him into attending, being that Rodrigue had helped put the event together, and again, he felt like maybe it was the least he could do for Dimitri, who for whatever reason genuinely seemed happy to have him be a part of all of this.

In spite of himself, he found his eyes kept wandering in Sylvain’s direction. He was sitting with Mercedes and Annette, two women whose eyes never seemed to miss a thing, and the last thing he wanted to do was be suspicious.

But the thing was, he hadn’t seen Sylvain in a while, so it was only natural to be curious. And Sylvain still had that way about him where he seemed to be larger than life in everything that he did. He’d suck up all the air in a room, and everyone else was powerless but to look at him.

(Not that Felix had complained about it in the past.)

Sylvain looked good, which, in all honesty, made him a little bit more angry than he thought it might have. It wasn’t like Sylvain didn’t have a right to be fine, after all, and Felix himself had moved on nicely as well, but maybe he was a little bit more vindictive than he would have liked to admit to. But Sylvain looked just as at ease as ever, an easy smile on his lips that only somewhat looked plastered on.

(Most of the time, Felix only got to see completely genuine smiles from Sylvain when they were alone. Any other time, he was too busy putting on a show. Maybe that was part of what he’d liked about him.)

When Sylvain had stood up to give a toast, he had that same smile on his lips, a mimosa glass in his hand. “I’m told I’m not allowed to make a toast at the actual wedding, because I have too many embarrassing stories about Dima here from our college days,” he said, winking in Dimitri’s direction, but from there he had turned and his eyes had kept moving back to Felix. Never for long enough to make it seem too obvious, but too often for it to feel like a coincidence.

It was enough that Felix felt like he couldn’t even really focus on the words the redhead was saying, though maybe that was just the easiest excuse to just drown him out. It wasn’t very different from any other wedding toast he had heard before - just the same old platitudes and easy jokes everyone would be comfortable with.

“I’ve been spending a whole lot more time lately thinking about love, and what it means to be in love,” Sylvain said at one point, and Felix absolutely would _not_ admit to the fact that his heart suddenly started to pound so hard it was painful. It was just a goddamn speech that Sylvain was absolutely just coming up with on the spot (and was probably only making just so that he could gain the attention of some of the bridesmaids who didn’t already know about him), and it absolutely didn’t mean anything. “And it’s really impressive, you know? That two people can meet and fall in love and know that they want to spend the rest of their lives together. It’s the kind of thing that people spend a lot of time only dreaming about having. I know _I’m_ jealous.”

And if there wasn’t a pain in Felix’s chest before, there certainly was now. While he knew, logically, that there wasn’t anything particularly groundbreaking about Sylvain’s words here and that Sylvain wasn’t the kind of person to try to publicly humiliate him, it almost felt like it. Because here he was, listening to the man that he had been _so_ ready to promise his life to - had already promised his life to as a child, more or less - talk about being jealous of someone else’s relationship, and it had to be some kind of joke.

From there, he couldn’t handle listening to any more, and if it wasn’t incredibly rude to just get up and walk out, he absolutely would have done so. Instead, he stared into the glass in his own hand, letting his mind wander elsewhere until Sylvain went to sit back down at his own table; the glassware looked so delicate, and it made him think back to how Dimitri would accidentally ‘Hulk smash’ things, and he wondered idly if anyone had taken that into consideration in the wedding dinnerware planning process. 

It was almost funny, that it was easier to think about Dimitri than it was to think about Sylvain.

* * *

The thing was, no matter how much Felix wanted to hate Sylvain, he didn’t actually have it in him.

Could he be furious with him? Oh, absolutely.

Having a romantic relationship with Sylvain had been something that he had never really considered an option until suddenly it was. He’d harbored some sort of feelings for the man for quite a while, but he’d tucked them away to never be seen.

Until somehow Sylvain had come around and smiled at him in a way that he’d never seen before and he’d kissed him so, so gently as if he was afraid that Felix was going to break or disappear.

It lasted about a year. Depending on who you were, a year in a relationship could feel like it was just barely beginning, but he had known that it was something he could hang his hopes on. He could take comfort in being with Sylvain and knowing that he would always be there. After all, Sylvain had never been with anyone this long - hell, he was practically allergic to staying the night, much less second or third dates - and they had already had such a strong foundation from knowing each other as long as they had.

They didn’t talk about a long term plan, no discussions of moving in together or marriage or kids, not wanting to suddenly jolt Sylvain into running by throwing too much at him too soon, but he was pretty sure they both knew that Felix had his eyes on forever. Finally, finally, he had someone he could count on who would stay and wouldn’t change.

It was good.

And then suddenly… Sylvain was gone, just like that. Still ever present in the background, still in their mutual friends’ lives, but no longer in Felix’s.

It was like the second half of a book he was reading suddenly being torn away from him. Once upon a time, he had skipped ahead to the ending to see how it would go, and this wasn’t what had been written on the last page. It wasn’t how it was supposed to go.

But here he was.

So he had shoved the book back on to the shelf, with all the other unfinished stories he’d been left behind with. Just another tragedy in the life of Felix Fraldarius that he didn’t have time to deal with.

* * *

That evening, not much was going on, which was a welcome change. Some of the wedding party turned in early, being that the next day would be busy and surely have at least one crisis before the day was done, though Ingrid had also told him that some of their college friends were going to go out for a while. After all, it wasn’t that often that they were all together anymore.

Felix had declined her invitation, though. For two reasons, really: one being that Sylvain, never one to miss a social occasion, was almost certainly going to be included in that group; and two: he didn’t need to drink any more today. He didn’t ever drink much to begin with so he certainly didn’t need a hangover for the wedding, and he had already had a difficult enough time getting through the day without a nap after drinking at brunch. He literally had no idea how some people were regular day drinkers.

And yet, he somehow ended up downstairs at the hotel’s bar nonetheless. He was restless staying in his room, and the bar was empty enough that it was a good hideaway even if he was just watching the same TV that he would’ve landed on if he’d stayed upstairs.

But apparently, perhaps, the real reason that he had felt the desire to go down there was because the universe wanted to laugh at him a little bit more, because at the point where he had been tucked up in his booth for about twenty minutes, none other than Sylvain fucking Gautier wandered in.

If the look on his face hadn’t portrayed actual shock for a brief second, Felix would have been pretty certain that he was stalking him, somehow, for whatever reason (had he ever turned off the setting so that Sylvain’s phone could always locate his?). But even Sylvain wouldn’t go to that level, and certainly not when he had been the one to leave.

Nonetheless, as soon as he caught sight of Felix, Sylvain seemed to decide this was his opportunity. “Fancy running into you here,” he said.

If he felt like there was any chance of just brushing him off, he might have attempted it, but he knew Sylvain and his stubborn streak far too well to even bother trying. “I’m more surprised to see you here.”

“Yeah, well, now I’m thinking that there’s nowhere I would rather be than right here,” Sylvain said as he slid into the booth, seemingly taking the fact that Felix had engaged him in conversation as an invitation to join him.

“What did I tell you about using your lines on me?” he asked.

“It’s not a line if it’s the truth,” he said with a shrug.

Felix wanted to pull his hair out. “Honestly. Is this some kind of game to you? Because it’s not a fun one for both of us,” he said.

Sylvain did have the decency then to at least look like he felt a bit bad for it. He didn't say anything for a moment, and then said, “It’s - I know this might be hard for you to believe, but nothing with you has ever been a game.”

“Well, you're right about that,” he said, not even bothering to keep the bitterness out of his voice. “That _is_ hard to believe. What are you even doing here? Shouldn’t you be out on the town with everyone?”

“I mean, I could ask you the same thing,” he pointed out, shaking his head. And oh, what a terrible coincidence it would be if they had both ditched out and come here to avoid each other; but no, Sylvain had been fairly transparent that he _didn’t_ want to avoid Felix. “Honestly, I feel like it’s a little bit weirder for you to be here. You hate bars.”

Making a noncommittal sound, Felix shrugged. “Alright. Fair,” he said. “I suppose it’s easier to explain why you’d come down here. Probably for a nightcap, or to find some girl to drag up to your room.”

“I don’t drink.”

That caught him off-guard. “You - what?”

“You said I probably came down here for a nightcap. I don’t drink anymore,” Sylvain explained.

“Not that it really matters, but I saw you drinking, earlier today,” he said, raising an eyebrow. “You definitely had a mimosa.”

Shaking his head, the redhead laughed. “Just orange juice. LIsten, I can _look_ like I’m doing a lot of things without actually doing them,” he pointed out. “Everyone expects to see a drink in my hand, so I fulfill that expectation.”

“Why?” Felix didn’t know why he was even taking the bait. There wasn’t going to be any good to come out of it.

“I don’t know. I just think that it’s easier that way,” he said with a small shrug. “I think it’s also easier than having the ‘Sylvain, why don’t you drink anymore?’ conversation.”

“Then why tell me any different?” he asked. “And why does it feel like you’re trying to guide me towards asking that very question?”

To his credit, Sylvain just laughed, letting Felix’s scathing tone slide right off his back. “I forgot how it feels to be around someone who can see through me so easily,” he commented. “Yes, I want to have that conversation. With you, specifically, and exclusively.”

“I doubt you’re doing anything with me exclusively.”

“I would,” he said. “If I thought I had a chance at it, I’d try to show you that I deserve to have a chance to _be_ exclusive with you again.”

And there it was again, that look that pinged of sincerity. But he had seen it all before, been through it all before, and Felix wasn’t about to put his heart through the wringer just to - to what, even? Entertain Sylvain? No, it wasn’t a question worth asking.

“Well, disappointing as this may be, I’m not going to ask,” he said, sliding out of the booth and getting to his feet. “Good for you for deciding to stop drinking. Your liver thanks you. Now, I’m going upstairs to get some rest. You should consider doing the same, it’ll be a long day tomorrow.”

Sylvain looked torn for just a second, and he started to get up as well before he settled back down on the bench. “Aw, you do care,” he said, his voice ringing with that same false cheeriness that made Felix itch.

“Whatever.” He didn’t know what made him linger, but he did, for just a moment, allowing himself to watch Sylvain, to see the emotions flicker across his face almost imperceptibly.

“I - Well, goodnight, Felix,” he said. “I’ll be looking forward to seeing you tomorrow.”

“Goodnight, Sylvain.”

* * *

Felix woke up to the sound of his phone vibrating.

He was very tempted to just silence it and roll back over for however long he had until his alarm went off, but he had been through far too much to fully ignore it when his phone went off, no matter the hour. He could never be sure what it was that was happening on the other end of the line, and he didn’t need to pile on any more regrets in his life.

So with blurry eyes, he picked up his phone and squinted at the screen. He wasn’t sure if it made it better or worse to see that the number on the screen was Sylvain’s.

For a brief moment, he thought about just declining the call, but there was a little piece of him that wouldn’t allow it. So he swiped his thumb across the screen and brought it up to his ear. “What?”

“Good morning, Felix,” came Sylvain’s voice from the other end of the line, far too cheery and awake. “Rise and shine.”

“Why did you wake me up,” he said, still too weighed down by sleep to actually make the words sound like a question.

“I’m going on a coffee and bagels run. Nothing better to kickstart wedding day, after all,” he said.

He ran his free hand over his face, but he found himself sitting up in his bed. It was clear that, for worse or for better, he wasn’t about to be able to just go back to sleep, even if he didn’t get roped into whatever Sylvain wanted from him. “And what does that have to do with me?”

“Why, isn’t it obvious? I’m calling to request your company,” he said.

Felix closed his eyes, counted backwards from ten. He really didn’t need to deal with this right now; he wasn’t sure it was a good idea to begin the day with a headache before any of the wedding festivities had gotten started. So he opened his mouth to decline, and instead found himself saying, “Give me ten minutes.”

There was a brief, stunned silence. “I thought you had hung up,” Sylvain said. “But, ah, great! I’ll be down in the lobby, alright? See you in a few.”

After the call ended, he let out a long groan, staring up at the textured ceiling of his hotel room for a long moment. He had always felt like he was a fairly reasonable person who was capable of making good decisions. Sylvain, however, had always had an uncanny way of coming into his life like he was swinging around a sledgehammer at all of his well-laid plans and somehow getting away with it.

Realistically, he knew that he could just stay in bed in spite of telling Sylvain that he was coming. Sooner or later he would get the hint, and maybe he would think twice about requesting Felix’s company again. It would remind him what a bitch he could be, and it would end up being a win for them both.

However, because he was a fool, Felix kept his word and he was downstairs ten minutes later.

It seemed to surprise Sylvain just as much as it did Felix himself, if the little ‘o’ his mouth formed for half a second was any indication, but he didn’t let it shake him for long. “Hey,” he said. “Thanks for agreeing to come along. I know you’ve never been much of a morning person.”

It was almost funny, the idea that that might be his biggest objection to going along with this coffee and bagels mission. “Right,” he said. “Let’s go.”

“Aye aye, captain,” he said, saluting Felix before heading out with him to the parking lot.

It shook him for a second to see Sylvain’s car out in the parking lot. He knew that it realistically hadn’t been that long since the last time he had seen him or his car, so it wouldn’t have made sense for him to get rid of it, and yet… It was a lot to take in. So much time had been spent in that car, so many highs and lows. Sylvain had jerked him off in that passenger seat like they were teenagers. He’d driven Sylvain to the hospital when his appendix decided to give up on him.

Shaking his head at himself, Felix grabbed the handle and swung the door open to get in. There was no point in being sentimental about something so ridiculous. It was a _car_.

Neither of them said anything for a minute or two after they pulled out of the parking lot, but the air had shifted. There was a certain tension to Sylvain, and Felix almost wondered if he was waiting for him to ask.

“I’ll be honest, as much as I like seeing you, I didn’t just call you to have company. I’m not so dependent that I need someone to hold my hand through things like this,” Sylvain said eventually. His eyes were straight ahead on the road, and his voice was serious.

“Of course you’re not.”

“Right, no, you know,” he said, working his jaw for a moment in a way that Felix had long ago come to associate with difficult conversations and feelings that Sylvain didn’t feel like he was qualified enough to feel. “I just… Okay. I feel like you deserve to have an actual conversation about what happened. Between us, I mean. Or, with me. In regards to us.”

Every ounce of the usual self-assured bravado Sylvain usually carried around with him was gone. It suddenly made more sense that they were having this conversation in the car- a perfect excuse to not look Felix in the eye. Not because he was going to lie, but because Sylvain - hell, both of them - were so unused to being openly vulnerable.

A part of Felix wanted to make some sarcastic remark about how no, the way they had left things off before had been a perfectly satisfying ending that had left him with zero questions. After all, he didn't want to just let Sylvain off the hook, no matter how good his explanation was, but… He also didn't want to scare him off.

“Go on, then,” he said instead, looking out the window as well; a complete and utter lack of contact was easier. Though it was almost funny, the fact that this conversation apparently could have happened over the phone if Sylvain had just thought to call.

(Felix probably would have sent it straight to voicemail, but that was neither here nor there.)

“I didn't really give you much of a reason then, because I think even at the time I knew, subconsciously, that my reasons were bullshit,” he said. “And you would have just seen right through them, and called me out.”

“This car ride can't be that long, so youʼre on a time limit here,” he pointed out. “So, enough stalling. What were your reasons?”

“I mean, I was… I think the easiest way of putting it is that I was scared shitless, even if I didn't realize that was what it was at the time,” he said. “Scared of what I felt for you, and what it meant.”

Felix huffed. “We were in a relationship, youʼre supposed to feel things,” he said, though maybe deep down a part of him could understand. He wasnʼt sure that he had ever let go of the fear of Sylvain leaving, right up to the point where it had actually happened.

“I know that. I mean, I definitely did know that, but it was something I had never really experienced until then,” he said. His fingers drummed on the steering wheel, another nervous tell. “It had always been easy, until I got involved with you. I kind of wondered why I ever did it to begin with.”

Felix changed a glance over at him, a small frown on his lips. “Donʼt tell me youʼre saying you regretted the whole thing,” he said. He was starting to mildly regret looking at Sylvain, because now he wasn’t sure that he had it in him to look away again. “Because if you think that's the kind of closure I want, you're stupider than I thought you were.”

“No, no, that’s not what Iʼm saying at all,” he resounded, a surprising amount of urgency in his voice. “I’ve spent a lot of time looking back on it, and unpacking everything. So I can say with a pretty high level of confidence that the only part I regret is how it ended.”

“Which you're still kind of dancing around, in case you havenʼt noticed,” he says, to ignore the way that his heart has started to pound again at the notion that Sylvain might wish he hadn't broken up with Felix. Or, maybe, he just wished that he had broken up with him in a different way.

“I know. Because I'm a coward who canʼt face his emotions. You know that about me,” he said.

“Yeah, you hide behind self-deprecation. Now, go on. Talk.”

Sylvain let out a sigh, but there was, against all odds, a smile on his face. “So direct. It's refreshing,” he said. “Anyway, yeah. I realized a while in that I was in over my head with you. Feeling things I'd never felt before. And I entered this awful cycle of, like… Some days I felt like I really had my shit together. I felt like this could work, and maybe I had finally found what I needed to make myself whole. Those days, you gave me a reason to get past all the bullshit in my life.”

“And other days?” he prompted.

“Other days, I felt like I was just faking all of it,” he said. “Like I had conned you into something, and eventually I was going to do something to fuck it up and Iʼd lose you over it.”

Raising an eyebrow, he said, “You lost me anyway.”

“Yeah, I know. And that's the most fucked up part of it, right? I spent so long in that cycle, and eventually I got trapped in the low end of it,” he said. “So, in the end, I did fuck it up. But because I sabotaged myself into fucking it up.”

“Why didn't you tell me?” he asked. “And - did you feel like that the entire time we were together?” 

“Yeah, I did,” he said, a dry little laugh escaping him. “Pathetic, right?”

“It doesn't even make sense. It was - we were _good_ , Sylvain.”

“I know. Like I said, I've spent a lot of time unpacking all of it. I know that I got way too into my own head over all of it,” he said. “But you would look at me, like I was just... And I knew you wanted forever, and I really felt like I couldn't give you forever.”

Neither of them said anything for a moment, and Felix was almost worried that that was all there was that Sylvain wanted to say. And while this certainly was more than he'd been told back when their relationship had initially come to an abrupt end, he would hardly call it satisfying.

But then Sylvain spoke again. “I think a big part of it was that I spent so long playing pretend with love, and that I never had a model of what real love was actually supposed to look like,” he said. “Sothis knows my parents never loved each other. Or at least, if they ever had, they didn't act like it.”

That was true. While his father's disdain for the Gautiers' parenting style had led to them mostly spending time together in the Fraldarius household as children, Felix remembered the way they'd argue. Hell, if he was going to be a little bit more charitable, there was also the fact that he hadn’t exactly had good models for what any kind of familial love felt like - Miklan had obviously never been the model brother, and the unconditional love that Felix had come to understand was meant to be part of parenting had definitely never been part of the equation for either of the Gautier brothers. But cutting Sylvain slack and understanding that he was damaged didn’t excuse the way he had thrown Felix out of his life with little concern for how it would impact him.

As if able to read his mind, Sylvain glanced over at him and went on, “I know that that’s just an excuse. Obviously we’re not just doomed to be like our parents, or, fuck, I hope we’re not. But the point is, I love you. Loved you.” Felix wasn’t sure what to make of that hasty correction. “But I got bogged down in the question of whether or not I was faking it even to myself. I’d spent so long going through the motions and saying the right things to women to make them fall for me, you know? Deep down, I’m pretty sure I was terrified that I was actually doing the same to you.”

Shaking his head, Felix frowned at him. It made a sort of sense, but at the same time he wasn’t sure that it made sense at all. “But it wasn’t the same. At all,” he argued. “I never would have fallen for your lines. We stayed in more than we went out. We dated for months before we had sex.”

“I know that now. I do. But I had to spend… a long time trying to get there,” he said. They were pulling into the parking lot of the coffee shop now, and they fell silent as Sylvain parked the car. Even as he turned the key to turn the car off, neither of them made a move to get out of the car. “I’ve been talking to someone. And I’m doing a whole lot less self-destruction these days.”

The drinking, Felix’s mind offered up as an example. It wasn’t like Sylvain had ever done anything too terrible when he would drink, and he didn’t rely on it, but it was definitely a vice he leaned into when his mind got too dark. It was something that Felix had never been a fan of.

“Well, that’s good,” he told him, and he genuinely meant it. There were things that were broken in both of them, and even though Felix had always known that it wasn’t his job to mend the fractures in Sylvain’s heart and he’d never tried, he’d always wanted to soften the sharp glass edges from hurting him further. It felt better knowing that he had taken up that work himself.

“I guess the bottom line here is… I’m sorry, for how everything happened,” he said. He paused for a moment, hesitating before reaching out and laying his hand on top of Felix’s, just barely touching. “And I know now that everything I was feeling with you was real. And if I had stuck around, we could have been the model of what real love is supposed to be that I’d been hoping for.”

His thumb was brushing lightly over Felix’s and those deep, warm eyes were looking into his own with far too much sincerity, and it was just a little bit too much for him to bear. He’d always been a leaky faucet around Sylvain, and while he also hadn’t ever been afraid of exposing that side of himself to Sylvain, right now there was too much going on in his mind and in his chest and on impulse he opened up the car door and got out.

“Come on,” he said, shaking his head to snap himself out of it. “Everyone’s waiting on their coffee.”

Sylvain looked a little bit discouraged, but he nodded as he got out of the car as well.

Several minutes later, as they figured out how to stow the coffee delicately enough that none would spill on the leather upholstery, Felix cleared his throat. “Sylvain?” he said, watching as the redhead snapped to attention. “I just wanted to… Thank you. For telling me.”

Sylvain smiled at him. “It was just as much for me as it was for you,” he said. “I needed to make sure you knew.”

* * *

Even though the venue was lovely and Dimitri did look good in his tux (and actually somehow had managed to not look too stiff in it, despite valid concerns), and of course Byleth looked absolutely beautiful in her wedding gown just as every bride was supposed to steal the show, once again Felix’s attention was drawn to Sylvain instead. It was like a curse.

All of the men standing alongside Dimitri had on deep blue vests and while blue had never really been Sylvain’s color (warm colors always seemed to suit him more), he was pulling it off nicely. He looked every bit a storybook prince; he had always been something impressive when he actually made an effort to be a sharp dresser. At one point during the ceremony, their eyes had met and he had given Felix a wink, and the electricity it shot through his body made him want to strangle him with the damn bowtie the groomsmen were all wearing.

But when their eyes met again at the reception, he didn’t shy away from it, nor did he try to get out of it when Sylvain started to make his way over towards him. “I was wondering if I might get the chance to dance with you,” he said.

“You know I’m not much for dancing.”

“Ah, but I also know that you’re pretty good at it,” he said with a little grin and honestly, fuck him for making Felix feel whatever _this_ feeling was again. “C’mon. I’ll even let you lead.” He reached his hand out to him in invitation, a question written on his face.

Felix let it stay there for a moment, everything up in the air lingering between them, before he eventually stretched his hand out to meet Sylvain’s, allowing him to pull him out to the dance floor. All of their friends were going to see them, and they were probably going to talk, but maybe that was alright.

“You know this doesn’t mean I forgive you,” he told him as they started to move together to the music; it was like riding a bike, it seemed. “It doesn’t mean _anything_.”

“I know,” he said with a nod. “And that’s what I’m counting on. I wouldn’t be able to prove to you that you can trust me this time if you don’t make me work for it.”

“You’d find a way to show me.”

“Yeah? You think so?”

Shrugging, Felix looked up at him with a hint of a smile on his lips. “I’ve got a feeling.”

There was happiness and hope and something that he couldn’t quite identify on Sylvain’s face, and it made something unfurl in his chest. “You always had more faith in me than I could understand.”

“Just don’t let me down again,” he said.

Taking the opportunity that was presented to him, Sylvain suddenly dipped him, a playful laugh escaping him. “Never again, Fe, I promise.”

And maybe, for the first time since Sylvain had left, he felt like he might have something to look forward to. His heart was still sore, but it was still beating, and he knew it would heal.

Sylvain had suddenly handed him his copy of the story of their relationship, but now there were annotations in neat script in the margins (for all Sylvain liked to play dumb, he always had actually been a very good and thoughtful student). All the pages he thought he’d lost years ago were back, but just knowing they were there was enough for him. He didn’t need to peek this time; he knew it would be alright.

**Author's Note:**

> i don't know how long it takes for them to get to a point where they actually get together again, but they get there eventually.
> 
> come say hi on twitter, where i like to tweet pictures of my cats: @bigfootsflannel


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